Eloise was quick-natured, too.  She put him out of the kitchen with a coal shovel, after which Herman told her through a crack of the door that she was a Lorelei.

Eloise, at first, misunderstood this term entirely, and wasn’t much less insulted when she found it meant one of these German hussies that hang round creeks for no good purpose.  Not that her attitude discouraged Herman any; he played under her window that night, and also sang a rich custard sort of tenor in his native tongue, till I had to threaten him with the bastile to get any sleep myself.

Next day he fetched her regal gifts, consisting of two polished abalone shells, a picture of the Crown Prince in a brass frame, and a polished-wood paper knife with Greetings from Reno! on it.

Eloise was now like an enraged goddess or something; and if Herman hadn’t been a quick bender and light on his feet she wouldn’t of missed him with his gifts.  As it was, he ducked in time and went out to the spring house to write a poem on her beauty, which he later read to her in German through a kitchen window that was raised.  The window was screened; so he read it all.  Later he gets Sandy Sawtelle to tell her this poem is all about how coy she is.  Every once in a while you could get an idea partway over on Herman.  He was almost certain Eloise was coy.

By the end of that second day, after Herman threw kisses to her for ten minutes from on top of the woodshed, where he was safe, she telephoned her brother to come over here quick, if he had the soul of a man in his frame, and kill Herman like he would a mad dog.

But Eloise left the next morning, without waiting for anything suitable to be pulled off by her family.  It was because, when she went to bed that night, she found a letter from Herman pinned to her pillow.  It had a red heart on it, pierced by a dagger that was dropping red drops very sentimentally; and it said would she not hasten to take her vast beauty out in the moonlight, to walk with Herman under the quiet trees while the nightingale warbled and the snee, or sidehill mooney, called to its lovemate?  And here, as they walked, they could plan their beautiful future together.

This was beyond Eloise even with a full battery of kitchen utensils at hand.  She left before breakfast; and Herman had to come in and wash dishes.

The next excitement was Herman committing suicide, out in the woodshed, with a rope he’d took off a new packsaddle.  Something interrupted him after he got the noose adjusted and was ready to step off the chopping block he stood on.  I believe it was one more farewell note to the woman that sent him to his grave.  Only he got interested in it and put in a lot more of his own poetry and run out of paper, and had to get more from the house; and he must of forgot what he went to the woodshed for because an hour after that he committed an entirely new suicide with his fowling piece.

Near as I could gather, he was all ready to pull the trigger, looking down into this here frowning muzzle before a mirror; and then something about his whiskers in the mirror must of caught his eye.  Anyway, another work of self-destruction was off.  So he come in and helped with lunch.  Then he told me he’d like to take some time off, because he was going up to the deep pool to drown himself.